Could I Be Anything You Want Me to Be?
by CitronPresse
Summary: In a bar, in Chicago, Katherine questions her senses and - for a little while, anyway - herself. Set during early Season 1 of Chicago Fire / early-mid Season 4 of Vampire Diaries. Pairings: Katherine/Kelly, Katherine/Mason


When she first catches sight of him, she considers that she might be going crazy. She's spent a long time on her own, drunk a _lot_ of human blood recently, even indulged in a little discreet killing; and Chicago's always kind of strange for her, after all those years stalking Stefan. But she knows crazy - intimately, been there done that over the eras she's spent in this world, and she feels entirely, mind-numbingly sane.

Then - _Shit, Klaus!_ And, simmering beneath her rapid plans for self-preservation, there's this sense of distaste, almost pity. Because Mason didn't deserve that: whatever creepy form the resurrection took; the hybrid weirdness; the lapdog allegiance to a petty, arrogant fuck-up with way too much power and some warped ways to wield it that even _she_ isn't quite comfortable with. _Oops – lapdog!_ she smirks, happy her odd sentimentality has been punctured, even by a truly terrible joke.

Then he starts to talk. Sort of.

_Scotch_, he says to the bartender. _Double_. As though the words are a huge effort, as though some momentous decision was made before he spoke them. Well, he always did like whisky – he never seemed quite so conflicted about it, though.

He winces, like he's in serious pain, and a spike of disquiet pierces her again for the less than one second she lets it. _What did Klaus do to you?_ she wonders. Unless it's the heart thing, in which case it was Damon, which . . . oh, God, she really can't be bothered to go there, not right now. Anyway, he's holding his _right_ shoulder, rubbing it, so it probably has nothing to do with that.

_Thanks_, he says, when his drink comes, then sighs as a blonde woman, tall, beautiful . . . actually, insanely hot, moves next to him and asks,

_Should you be -?_

_It's fine_, he says. _I'm fine_, then knocks back the entire thing, defying her concern, smiles a raised-eyebrow, half-open, half-shut-down smile, and slams the glass back down on the bar.

The blonde shakes her head, narrows her eyes. _You're an ass_, she says, and walks away.

He swallows, closes his eyes, like he's suddenly feeling sick; rests his head in his hands, leaning his elbows on the bar.

_It's fine. I'm fine_, she replays in her head, sifting through the nuances of his speech patterns. And she knows, for a fact, a fact that freaks her out for a scary, irrational moment - because, seriously, how many fucking doppelgangers are there in the world? It was supposed to be just her (and Elena), wasn't that what all the fuss was about?! – he's not Mason.

For a start, the whole Lockwood thing isn't there. Okay, Mason was the least Lockwood-ish Lockwood she ever met; and, okay, this one has a kind of pride about him . . . somewhere. But Lockwoods have a unique, genetic brand of oblivious narcissism that nothing can ever quite extinguish, and no one else can ever quite imitate.

Then, he's so obviously not a werewolf, it's ridiculous she ever thought he was one. No manic energy; no eagerness to please – even the ones who like to think they're cool have it - mixed up with paradoxical, always under the surface, reflexive aggression; no faint whiff of dog hair wafting through the bar.

She's intrigued, and, yeah, a little turned on. She liked fucking Mason. Occasionally, she even liked talking to him afterwards. So she slides down from the stool she's perched on and slinks deliberately towards him.

Men usually have a sixth sense for her, so she's expecting him to raise his head and stare. He doesn't. It spoils her entrance, but arouses her a little bit more.

"Is this seat taken?" She smiles enticingly and laughs a little tinkling laugh that went down so well in the 1860s, got her from parlor to pussy in record time (with Stefan, more than once, actually), and isn't without its power this century either.

It's lost on him. Except that, irritatingly slow and bleary, he looks up, squints at her, like he's trying to focus.

"Yeah . . .no . . . uh . . ." He blinks, waves his hand at the stool, swallows again. "Be my . . ." Then, finally, he looks at her properly, and a slow grin appears on his face. "Hey," he says.

She smiles, wriggles her shoulders a little, "Hey, yourself," she replies.

* * *

He's a firefighter. He hates himself. His gorgeously human body makes her want to feed and fuck, she doesn't know which one first, and when she's done just lie back and stare at him, then start all over again.

Kelly, he says his name is. Severide. That's fine. She keeps wanting to call him Mason, keeps biting the name back, along with the sliver of regret she keeps telling herself she doesn't feel.

He has a sense of decay about him, even though he's very much alive. In the morning, when the alcohol, exhaustion, and the drugs she could smell in his blood have worn off and he wakes up in pain he can't conceal, she knows why. He's in the early, almost imperceptible stages of beginning to die. Not really even close, yet; but his body's edging towards giving up, along with his will to live.

She asks him about it.

He shrugs. "My neck's broken," he says, trying to sound casual, like he's telling her he has a splinter, except the act doesn't work on her, she can see, feel, hear, smell, taste that he's terrified. He smirks, deflecting. "Let's fuck again."

They do. It's magnificent. He makes her gasp, close her eyes, reach for him as she comes, almost like a human she can't really remember being.

Later, he adds, "My best friend died." Later still, "I may have killed him."

In the shower, while he dozes, she thinks about his hands on her breasts, his tongue in her mouth, his hunger, his vitality and how he's losing it bit by bit. She imagines Mason, the way he died, Damon's hand in his chest, his agony, the love she really didn't want, that bored her senseless, and yet . . . she's here, now, isn't she?

She can help this one. Why the hell not?

* * *

"You wanna try something kinky?" she invites, just to see the glint of interest, shock, perhaps, in his eyes before she compels him. She bites into her wrist, smiling at him wickedly from behind her hand.

"Fuck!" He actually shrinks back on the bed and she can't help giggling. "Katherine, that's fucked!"

"It's fine," she intercepts, locking her eyes with his as she crawls onto the bed next to him. "It's delicious, you're gonna like it, I promise." She holds her wrist up to his mouth. "Taste me," she says, as though the decision's still his, and he does, slow at first, building up to sucking on her furiously, like his body's healing processes have some primal instinct for how this works.

She ignores the fleeting thought that she'll miss him; that she kind of already does now that his fierce, flagging selfness has dissolved into her mind; that this might be the closest thing to . . . let's call it affection, she's felt in forever.

When he's done, he falls asleep almost instantly, pulling her down on the bed in his arms with strength she pretends she can't resist, burying his head in the crook of her neck.

Hours later, when she gets up to leave, he murmurs, "Stay," without even waking.

She finds herself pausing, entertaining impressions on the periphery of a young girl's mind, centuries ago, of something she never knew how to want, only knew how to run away from, even when she was alive.

He rolls over, adjusts his body to her absence, and she smiles at him one last time, brushes her fingers across his cheek.

"Baby, you'd just get your heart ripped out," she whispers, then walks out without looking back.

* * *

Works inspired by this one _Try To Hold On Tight Tonight_ by waltzmatildah


End file.
